Global organizations need global leaders who will be able to lead across cultures. It is, however, not enough only to move successful local leaders to new cultures. A recent study by Right Management entitled Leading Across Cultures in the Human Age has identified six key competencies for success in global leadership, clomedia.com informed.
1. Social adaptation - ability to adapt to new people, be interested in them and get on well with them in unfamiliar social situations.
2. Demonstration of creativity - interest in new challenges and learning new things from different sources, trying to find new creative approaches.
3. Evenness - ability to remain calm, not being unnecessarily critical to oneself and learn from mistakes.
4. Respect for different beliefs - respect for different political and religious beliefs in different cultures.
5. Trust - building and maintaining relationships built on trust, respectively on the ways trust is being perceived in different cultures.
6. Understanding ambiguity - ability to perceive ambiguity and uncertainty, not to get frustrated and understand how things are done in a different culture.
Development and retention of global leaders within a company then requires the following four steps:
1. Right selection of managers for international and global roles
Base your selection on the above-mentioned responsibilities. Create individual development plans based on the analysis of missing skills. Evaluate the strength of individual competencies with regard to anticipated results.
2. Building talent bases around the world
Introduce the process of identifying, developing and maintaining talents for potential global roles within your talent development strategy. Use coaching to accelerate the development.
3. Supporting the success of leaders in global roles
Once you decide to shift a leader's role to the global level, it is necessary to implement steps to help him succeed. Set up the action plan for the first 90 days together, offer coaching and regular meetings to monitor how the set objectives are being met.
4. Localization of country management teams
Focus on the development of your own local talents to be able to take over global roles in the future. Try leadership development programs tailored to the two or three highest levels of management.
1,867 leaders from 13 nationalities participated in th Leading Across Cultures in the Human Age study. After completing the registration form, you can download the whole study from this site: http://www.research.right.com/leadingacrosscultures.
-kk-